Aladdin (2019)

So this is a movie that I was split on from the very first trailer. I had a particular bias towards Aladdin when I was a kid and while I knew nothing was going to stand up to the original, I thought it'd be fun to at least see something a little bit different and get those nostalgia feels. But unfortunately, the word of mouth on this one was not good and I waited until I saw it on a plane.

And even now, I'm pretty split on it. There are elements that were done well with this movie, and at the same time, it's a movie that really won't stand the test of time in the long run, especially in comparison with the animated film.

The plot is exactly what you remember from the animated film with very little deviation. Aladdin (played by Mena Massoud) is a street rat in a fictional Middle Eastern town called Agrabah.

He falls in love with the Princess of Agrabah, Jasmine (played by Naomi Scott) but due to their social class, they are unable to be together. After a series of unfortunate events, Aladdin finds himself being used by the evil Vizer to the Sultan, Jafar (played by Marwan Kenzari) to enter the Cave of Wonders as find a magical lamp. When the deal with Jafar goes wrong, Aladdin meets the Genie (this time played by Will Smith) and he is granted 3 wishes. Aladdin uses those wishes to become Prince Ali of Ababwah and shenanigans ensue.

The one big difference is that there is a lot more emphasis in this movie on Jasmine's desire take over from her father, the Sultan (played by Navid Negabhan, the guy who played Abu Nazir from Homeland which was kind of personally distracting) and they give her a female empowerment song and while the song is... fine, the plot line is probably the best part of the movie and its a good place to start when discussing what this movie does right.

Naomi Scott as Jasmine is the best part of the movie and you know why? She's just written better! She's not a carbon copy of Jasmine from the original, she's got her own deal and she feels at least a little bit different with some of the same notes.

Yeah I don't love her new song, but if you put together the fact that Naomi Scott has a really good voice and seems to actually be putting her own take on the character, she adds so much more than almost everyone in this movie... so good on her.

And honestly, when the movie is given the opportunity to do something different, I actually found myself enjoying it. I think the movie needed to recognize that there are things that you can do in animation that just don't work in live action, but one the same note, there are things you can do with live action that can't be done in animation, and you swap those out.

Obviously its not that simple but I feel like they did it with Jasmine and they tried their best to do it with Will Smith as the Genie.

Will Smith is not bad as the Genie. Its obvious that if Robin Williams had been alive Disney would have tried to get him in this role and have him do the exact same thing he did the first time, but they recognized that Will Smith wasn't going to be able to totally recapture this. So they did this crazy idea of letting him do his own thing, and it works! ... Sorta.

At the end of the day, the Genie that Aladdin gets is just Will Smith, which writing that out is kind of funny. Overall, it works better than I think people were expecting it to and I gotta give Smith credit for taking on that role. There are moments where they are trying to have Smith do Robin Williams and those are the moments when he loses a lot of steam and interest, but when he's able to just be Will Smith and do Hitch set in Agrabah, its actually not bad.

I think it's funny that people freaked out both when they showed Will Smith without the blue makeup, then with it, and at the end of the day, the best parts of the genie are when he's not the big blue (Robin Williams) being, but when he's just Will Smith with some awesome genie powers.

I'm not totally sure why they needed to give him a love interest (played by Nasim Pedrad) and I think you brutally underutilized a very funny female comedian in that role, but that's a very small thing.

There are other things that distinguish this movie from the animated. The aesethetic, the diverse cast, the cool shots and utilization of sets were done pretty well and I can point to a couple of parts of this film that I had fun with and even found a little charming.

But when the movie is trying to BE the animated film, that's when it loses that charm. And I'm not talking about homage, I'm talking about taking the script and shots from the original and just remaking it, and unfortunately that's the most prevalent with Aladdin himself...

To be fair to Mena Massoud, he is probably the only character they ripped directly from the original animated film and just created for a live actor. He does not divert from the animated character and therefore is in direct comparison.

Again, somethings in animation just can't be recreated, so when you see Massoud have a line read or a reaction, it doesn't have the same impact as the animated character, and a lot of the time it feels cheap because its just recreating scenes without really thinking on why those shots and moments were iconic in the first place.

What's more, is the animation in this film is not very good at all and that doesn't work to Massoud's benefit because he interacts with the animated characters the most. Abu looks like garbage, the blue Genie is some uncanny valley shit, and overall it doesn't feel like they put the most money into the animation to make it look real. Again, if you're going to skimp on the CGI to make this live action remake look real, why are you making a live action remake?

And then there's Jafar...

Now I don't wanna shit on this guy too much because there's already been far too many people just trashing him.

Some of it is unwarranted... but a lot of it is.

This was just a weird casting. This Jafar is muted, he's kind of boring, and while I think I can see where they wanted to go with him, he just feels like a casting they'd do for Once Upon a Time, not a big budget film.

To give some credit, I do like how they delved a little into his backstory to make him more relateable with Aladdin and how he built himself up from nothing. Furthermore, it's not far to compare him to the animated film... but if you're going to try and recreate this iconic villain, you gotta either create a fully different character and let Marwan Kenzari do something different with it, or you need to cast someone who can pull off that over the top nature that came from the original. And that's pretty much the theme for the entire film.

I think there are a couple of elements about this film that could have made it a really good adaptation and lends itself to a live action film. But I honestly think thinking about this movie has bummed me out this week because it really demonstrates where we're at in the pop culture zeitgeist.

There's a good movie hidden in this film. This could have been a send up to Bollywood, or an updated take on the '92 classic with the focus on Jasmine or just something different that set it apart. And if those things were done correctly, it could be a movie that will be remembered. 

But as it stands, it just feels like a cash grab that we're all buying into. Disney has no incentive to create new material because these are cash conglomerates. 

I do think there were a lot of moments in this movie that I liked and I don't think its the most god awful thing out there, but its just overshadowed by corporate mandates to recreate that nostalgic feeling we got when we were kids. So much that when they do do something different like a

Bollywood dance number at the end, combined with the cheap animation, the sub-par acting, and additional song that sounds more like high school musical then Aladdin, it just kind of seems cheap and a high budget Disney Channel movie rather than a real film that Disney wants to last in their halls of accomplishments.

The funny thing is, I see this happening with the rest of Disney's projects. Aside from Spider-man (which was a Sony Project) we haven't had any Endgame films and I'm worried that Marvel is just going to go into auto pilot and put out schlock because they know we're going to see familiar, nostalgia warming things. And now that Kevin Fiege's off to make a Star War, are we going to go into that nostalgia pandering with future Star Wars film. Say what you will about The Last Jedi, but at least it was something different, at least it was Ryan Johnson trying to put some freaking art into the corporate world we live in.

I gotta end this review.

Overall, Aladdin is okay. It's not good, it's not god awful, there are parts about it that are actually pretty good while others that aren't great but I just feel tired after thinking about it too much so I'm done.

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Thanks for reading.